


Tomb Raider in Space

by pulmapeli



Category: Tomb Raider & Related Fandoms, Tomb Raider (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Outer Space, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-10-28 02:21:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20770928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pulmapeli/pseuds/pulmapeli
Summary: What it says on the tin. Just writing this for fun XD





	1. Chapter 1

Below the planet’s surface, Lara gripped a ledge tighter, getting ready to swing. In her head, she counted―one, two, three―then launched herself across the gap. She hit the other side and scrabbled upward, holding her breath until she had a firm grip again. 

A quick muscle-up brought her level with a huge stone doorway she’d seen from afar. It was shaped oddly, not the proportions of a human doorway. Quite wide, but she had to crouch to get through. The tunnel on the other side had a ceiling only slightly higher. 

“Strange,” she commented to herself, pausing to touch the doorjamb. “I wonder what the people who made this doorway look like.”

Maybe it was premature to be calling the unknown alien species _people_, but she’d made the mistake before of thinking creatures were more inhuman than they really were. Nowadays, until proven otherwise, she would give the benefit of the doubt to anything smart enough to use tools.

The dull gray light from outside faded too much as she proceeded, so she cracked one of her glowsticks and shook it to mix the chemicals in a smooth, practiced motion. Its golden glow suddenly revealed plentiful carvings on the walls. Not as elaborate as some she’d seen on Earth, but at least as sophisticated as cave paintings from tens of thousands of years ago. There were mostly uneven squares and rectangles, but also various oval shapes with lines that could be legs.

“Can’t tell which of these shapes might be people. If any,” she mused.

She touched one groove, trying to guess what kind of tool made it. Something not very sharp, which may explain the low level of detail in the carvings, but pointed nonetheless and harder than stone.

A gust of wind blew past Lara, startling her. She touched her knife holster and remembered also not to assume that the people responsible for creating ancient ruins had perished, nor that they would be friendly to visitors.

The walkie-talkie on her belt crackled as her friend Samantha Nishimura’s voice came through. “How’s it going, Lara?” 

Lara hooked the glowstick on her belt to free her hand for the radio, keeping one hand always free for a weapon. “Going well. I found a doorway, and some old carvings.”

“Ooh, I can’t wait to photograph them! Is it safe to come down?”

Lara grinned. “So impatient. It takes time to check everything, Sam. There could be dangerous beasts, or dangerous people, or unstable structures―” 

“Or booby trapped puzzle chambers, or hallucinogenic flowers...” Sam interrupted. “I know, I know. I’m just really excited to finally get to come with you on an expedition instead of, you know, getting shipwrecked and kidnapped and sacrificed to an angry immortal storm queen.”

Lara laughed with her, feeling surprisingly light-hearted. It was great having Sam along, even if all the worry was hard to let go. Sam was skittish and liked her creature comforts and couldn’t do a pushup to save her life. Not exactly someone suited to the kind of things Lara had had to endure. But Lara also couldn’t refuse her friend, who insisted on coming along for this once-in-a-lifetime chance to investigate the first alien ruins ever found.

“I’ll explore to the end of this hallway, and if it’s sealed off, then I’ll go back and help you find a route to here with the rope ladder.”

“Probably goes on forever,” Sam grumbled. 

“Yes, an infinite tunnel that defies all reason,” Lara teased, peering at even more carvings on the walls. The figures seemed like part of a larger pattern, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. 

“Stranger things have happened with you, Lara.”

Lara hummed in agreement and clipped the walkie talkie to her belt again, sensing the conversation was over for now. She looked around carefully as she proceeded, always alert to telltale signs of tripwires and trapdoors. So far the tunnel seemed very uniform and safe. It was possible the builders had no concept of defending it from outsiders. Maybe only humans had that survival pressure of threats from each other. Lara let out a scoffing laugh at herself for the brief idealism.

Progress was slow and the tunnel was long, but finally she saw it change ahead. She clicked the walkie talkie button. “I see something at the end. An open space, maybe, but still too dark to tell.” 

At the opening, she paused and readied another glowstick. She flung it into the darkness ahead and stared in astonishment as it flew across the large expanse with no visible ceiling or floor, bounced off the far wall, and drifted back toward her―floating in midair.

“Sam... I may have found an infinite tunnel that defies all reason.”


	2. Chapter 2

Lara clenched her fists on her cargo pants, knuckles turning white as Samantha shifted, getting even closer to the edge. 

“Lara, this is incredible!” she said excitedly.

“Right,” Lara croaked.

Samantha turned away from the expanse to look at her. “What’s with you? Don’t tell me  _ you _ of all people are afraid of heights.” She reached into a duffel bag almost as big as she was and started digging around.

“I’m fine with heights; I just have a healthy respect for how potentially deadly they are,” Lara replied. “Unlike some people here.”

Samantha chuckled. “We can both see your glowstick just chilling out there. There’s no gravity in the freaky infinite room. If I get too close to the edge, the worst thing I have to worry about is drifting out of reach until you figure out some way to pull me back.”

Lara bit her lip, worried her friend had too much faith in her ability to always come to the rescue. “We don’t know if a whole human would float too.”

“Maybe once I get some readings we’ll understand it better.” Samantha pulled out a few handheld devices and begin wiring them together, fiddling with dials. “The laser altimeter should be able to tell us how deep it is, and I’ll calibrate this accelerometer―”

Lara tuned out the details. Sam had taken a specialized geospatial information course with NASA to get ready for the expedition, and the signal readings she was babbling about now would go right over any layman’s head. Lara was plenty smart but knew her own strengths lay in more practical applications, like upgrading assault rifles with boar fat and bear hides. She relaxed a little as she listened and enjoyed watching Sam work.

“―negligible, the sensors can’t even tell which way is up,” Samantha went on, holding a device and sensor out in the expanse. “But my initial readings here in the hallway were completely normal. This is amazing. This is  _ impossible _ .” 

Lara just smiled at her. “Mhm.”

Samantha gestured wildly with the device. “How are you not freaking out over this? Gosh, the things you must have seen on your adventures. I’m so jealous. This is way better than soul possession. Here, will you hold this antenna for me?”

Lara stood up and took the antenna. “How should I hold it?”

“Parallel to the floor. Straight out into the Freaky Room. Perfect, hold it there.” Samantha stared at the screen of the receiver for a minute before setting it down and approaching Lara. “Wait, lean a little more. Backwards, to the side.” 

Lara felt Samantha’s delicate hands against her torso, pushing her into place, and was so suddenly light-headed that she almost lost her balance. She hastily raised her leg as a counterweight. 

“Now your other arm...” Samantha grasped Lara’s free arm and raised it to be level with the other one. “Hold it, hold it.”

“I feel ridiculous,” Lara grumbled.

“You  _ look _ ridiculous,” Samantha replied, doubling over with laughter. “You don’t have to stand like that. I’m just messing with you.”

Lara made a face and playfully smacked Sam on the arm. “You’re an ass!”

“You know you love me,” Samantha shot back flippantly.

“Yeah, yeah.” Lara settled into a more comfortable stance to keep the antenna in a good enough position.

Samantha picked up her tablet computer and tapped a few things on the screen. “Okay, we’ve got some good data now. Unfortunately... I think I’ll need to go out to the middle of it to get a full scan. No joke this time.”

Lara set down the antenna and started to put on a climbing harness.

“What are you doing?” Samantha asked. “I said I’ll go out there.”

“No way.”

“Why not? I don’t need to be super strong to float in the air like a lazy river at a theme park.”

“If something goes wrong, I can handle it better.”

“You’re never gonna let me do the fun stuff, are you,” Samantha said, pouting cutely.

“If by ‘fun’ you mean ‘life-threatening,’ then no. Never.” Lara hooked a rope to her harness with a carabiner and jammed an anchor into the wall.

“You’re damaging a pristine alien structure!” Samantha protested.

“At least I'm not destroying priceless ancient artifacts. This is fine. Relatively speaking.” 

With a quick tug-test on the rope, Lara jumped forward from the edge, into the expanse. Samantha grudgingly handled the spool of wire to keep giving slack to the antenna.

When Lara was far enough, she gripped the rope with just enough friction for a slow stop instead of a sudden jerk that would make her bounce right back toward the hall. Zero-gravity was sort of a new experience, but basic laws of physics had been beaten into her bones over the course of her adventures. She drifted there in the middle of nothingness, feeling at ease with the world in a way she never did when she returned home.

Lara examined her surroundings. The walls of the dark vertical channel had two parallel ridges going down the side, above and below the opening to the hallway where Samantha was tapping on her tablet, muttering to remind herself of everything from her crash course.

“Rails?” Lara wondered aloud. “Maybe if I follow them, I’ll find some kind of tram.” She shifted around in the air uncomfortably, wanting to check it out immediately. She wasn’t used to having to wait for someone else to finish collecting data before she could investigate all the things that were so interesting they practically glowed in her mind.

“I see you squirming out there, Lara. Gimme a few more seconds, and then you can go get into trouble.”

Lara made a face at her even though she wasn’t looking.

“Okay, bring back the antenna.”

A few easy tugs brought her back to the hallway, and soon she was free to follow the rails while Samantha started photographing the alien wall carvings.

“It’ll be so fun when we get back to base camp and share all these data,” Samantha mused, standing back for a panorama shot. “That engineer lady would love to check out this gravity business. And the linguist lady―do you think the carvings are art or writing? Wonder if the other teams have found anything cooler.”

“They do seem like hieroglyphics,” Lara agreed absently, already preoccupied with the rails. There wasn’t enough rope for her to stay anchored as far down as they seemed to go, but maybe she wouldn’t need to bother with anchoring and reattaching. Each ridge looked very easy to grip, though too far apart for her armspan.

Puzzled and intrigued, Lara picked a rail to work her way down, headfirst to watch where she was going. With the lack of gravity, all she had to do was make sure she wouldn’t drift away from the wall. The glowstick on her belt created a bubble of light around her, illuminating only the endless, featureless track.

“If had attachable wheels, I could move so much faster,” she grumbled. She fantasized about building something like those old hand carts used on railroads. Maybe there were enough materials at base camp.

Finally she saw something interrupting the continuing darkness: another hallway just like the one she’d come through. It was jarring to step into it and feel the effects of gravity again, her body seeming unusually heavy, like standing on the ground after jumping on a trampoline.

She stretched her limbs as she paced along the hallway, finding more of those alien carvings. They looked very similar to the ones in first hallway. In fact, identical.

“Probably not art, then,” Lara concluded. “A message, maybe. But what does it mean?” She reached the far end of the hallway and saw more of the same kind of confusing underground rock formations she’d had to navigate on her way down from the surface. “What kind of species builds in a place like this?”

The only thing she could think of that might offer more answers―besides analyzing findings―was to explore either all the way up or all the way down the endless channel. But it was getting late, and all three exploration teams were supposed to return to the surface by mealtime or else a rescue party would be sent after them. Lara knew she should be grateful for the extra safety that provided, but instead she felt frustrated at the limitations it put on her.

With a sigh, she walked back to the channel and began pulling herself along the rail to return to Samantha and the way out.


End file.
